


Breakfast Special

by littlereyofsunlight



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Breakfast Feels, Cute Kids, Gen, POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 11:46:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7049176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlereyofsunlight/pseuds/littlereyofsunlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy and Steve’s son wants to surprise them for a special day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakfast Special

**Author's Note:**

> Written for steggyweek2k16 on tumblr. Day 4: Domesticity  
> Takes place in that happy AU where (almost) no one dies in the war!

Michael James crept out of bed as quietly as he could manage. He knew his Papa could probably hear him, so Michael James went to the washroom and flushed the toilet and ran the tap, just in case. He did that most early mornings and usually went back to bed after, because Mum and Papa liked to sleep in. But not this morning. This morning was special. 

Holding his breath, he inched past the closed door to Mum and Papa’s room. Across the hall, Sarah was standing up in her crib, watching him with her wide brown eyes. Silently, she reached out her hand to him. Michael James looked down at the stairs and back to his sister. If he left her, she might cry out and ruin his surprise. If he took her with him, she might make noise anyway and ruin the surprise. But at least the noise would be downstairs, where Papa might not hear them so well. He could put Sarah in her playpen while he worked. He looked back at his parents’ door. He didn’t have hearing like Papa, but he thought they were still asleep. 

Sarah went willingly and quietly into his arms and he lifted her up over the bars of her crib. “We’re going to make Mummy and Papa breakfast today, little girl,” he murmured as he crept back towards the stairs. 

Sarah sucked solemnly on her pacifier and twined her little fingers into the hair above Michael James’s collar. He tucked her head under his chin and splayed his free hand against her back as he took the stairs very slowly. He liked the way his sister smelled in the mornings, like baby powder and bread. When he reached the ground level, Michael James relaxed a little. 

“We can’t do the bacon until the very end,” he told Sarah as he settled her into her playpen in the corner, “the smell might wake them up before the surprise is ready.” Sarah nodded and sat down heavily on her bottom, still staring at him.

He took his Top Secret Surprise plan out of his pajama pants pocket, unfolded it and laid it on the counter, away from the stovetop. He’d taken notes the last three Sundays while Papa made breakfast, pretending to be working on his homework. He’d even asked questions about the recipes Papa used, because Papa had memorized them a long time ago but Michael James hadn’t. 

First he turned the oven on low, so he could keep things warm once they were done. He lined up his supplies on the kitchen table: the pancake mix, the two cartons of eggs, the milk, the butter, the brick of orange cheese, salt, pepper, cinnamon, vanilla. Papa had told him the recipe for pancakes, but Michael James knew Mum kept a box of mix in the back of the pantry for when Papa was away on a Sunday. She said it tasted just the same if they added a pinch of cinnamon. Michael James paid attention, though, and he knew Mum had missed that there was vanilla extract in Papa’s recipe, too. Papa told him about how Grandma Barnes, who wasn’t exactly their Grandma but had so many grandkids she didn’t mind a few extras (so she said), would make pancakes for his birthday when he was young, and she always added vanilla and cinnamon. Grandma Barnes made pancakes for everyone on their birthdays, even Grandma Sarah when she was alive. Pancakes were a special-occasion food back then, Papa had explained, even though now they had them every Sunday. 

Today was a special occasion and a Sunday, so Michael James carefully measured the mix into a bowl and added the eggs, milk, vanilla and cinnamon. He’d started helping Papa stir the mix back when he was five, when it had been hard to reach his arms around the bowl and power the spoon through the batter. Now that he was seven, he didn’t make so much of a mess of it. That was good, because the surprise was breakfast for Mum and Papa, not a messy kitchen to clean up. He put the frying pan on the stovetop, added a pat of butter and turned on the burner. This next bit was a little tricky, but he’d figured out a way to measure out the right amount of batter. Papa usually just poured right out of the bowl into the pan, but Michael James was prepared with one of the nesting measuring cups. He was big enough to stir the batter until it was smooth, but he didn’t think he could lift the bowl and only pour a half-cup of batter on his own just yet.

“Okay, little girl, we are going to start cooking now. If I burn the first one, I can always toss it in the bin.” That was what Mum did, anyways. Papa never burned the pancakes. He said he just had a good sense of smell, too, but Mum always said it was because he watched them like a hawk while he was cooking. “You couldn’t bear over-cooking a single thing,” she’d say from the table, doing her crossword in pen. Papa would tell her he just didn’t like waste, and then he’d flip the pancake without a spatula. Sometimes Mum would call him a “show-boat” for that, but she always smiled as she said it. 

Michael James couldn’t flip the pancake without a spatula yet, but he was getting good at flipping with one. He stood in front of the stove and watched as the batter took a more defined shape around the edges. He wanted to poke at it, but he waited until the air bubbles started to come up from the bottom, and then counted to ten slowly before he flipped it. Now the top was perfectly browned. While he waited for the bottom to cook, Michael James set a plate and a clean cloth napkin beside the stove, ready to hold the finished pancakes. Once he’d built up two good-sized stacks, taking care to add more butter to the pan after every third pancake, Michael James covered them with the napkin and set them on the top rack in the oven to stay warm. 

Next were the eggs. Papa made them on Sundays, but they were Mum’s favorite recipe. He cracked and cracked and cracked the rest of the eggs into the bowl. Mum always teased Papa about how many eggs he made on Sundays. Sometimes he teased her back about building a chicken coop for the yard, which would always put a frown on Mum’s face while she said, “I had enough time living with fowl that week we spent in Austria, as you well know, Steve. We’ll buy our eggs.” 

Mum and Papa didn’t talk much about the war, except when Michael James’s uncles came to visit. Then they’d sit around the living room, drinking beers and telling loud stories after Michael James had been sent up to bed. Sometimes Uncle Dum-Dum (that wasn’t really his name, Mum said, and again, he wasn’t exactly their uncle) would sing songs, but he always got shouted down by the others before he sang the really interesting parts. On those nights, JJ Morita would come and sleep over in his room, and they would both settle in front of Michael James’s closed door and try to listen under the crack. Once they fell asleep right there, and forgot to move their sleeping bags and Mum had cracked them both in the head with the door when she came to wake them the next morning. 

Michael James cut a small piece of cheese off the brick of cheddar and handed it to Sarah, who immediately switched out her pacifier in favor of gnawing on the snack with all three of her teeth. Then he took up the grater and added about a third of the cheese to the eggs. Mum’s recipe included a pinch of salt and a dash of pepper, but that was from when Cook had made scrambled eggs for Mum and Uncle Michael (who was truly his uncle, and half his namesake besides, but had died in the war before Mum had even joined up), and Sunday scrambled eggs required a great deal more of each, which Michael James added, and then a quarter cup of milk, before he took up the fork to beat everything together. Once that was accomplished, he deviated from the plan a bit to fix Sarah a bottle of water to stop her smacking her lips so much upon finishing the cheddar. Back on task, he wiped out the frying pan, turned the burner back on and added more butter. The huge amount of eggs had to be done in two batches, so he got out a casserole dish and another clean napkin and set to work. 

So far, Michael James’s plan was going marvelously. He took a moment to clean up any drips or splashes from the eggs and pancakes before he pulled the fat sausage and paper-wrapped bacon out of the refrigerator. Papa preferred bacon but Mum had sausage with Sunday breakfast, so they kept both in the house. Michael James was happy to eat either, of course, and he wasn’t sure why there was ever any debate. Papa seemed pretty happy to eat either, too, but Papa was always happy to eat most anything. He had to eat a lot, he said, because he had a lot of years of not quite enough to eat to make up for. But Mum said he really had to eat so much to stay big and strong. Michael James tried to eat a lot so he could be big and strong, but he couldn’t eat nearly as much as Papa.

As he set the plate of finished sausages aside and reached for the bacon, the latch turned in the back door and a bouquet of flowers came into the house. It was a very big bouquet, so Michael James didn’t see at first who was carrying it. He held up the big fork he’d used to spear the sausage and backed up so he was standing in front of Sarah, blocking her from the person with the flowers. Mum had told him he must always look after Sarah first if there was ever any danger, no matter what.

Then Uncle Bucky (again, not exactly his uncle, even though he was over all the time and was source of the other half of his name) peeked out from around the flowers and gave him a crinkly-eyed smile. “Hey, kiddo,” he whispered, “I guess we had the same idea that your folks could use a nice surprise for their tenth anniversary.” Michael James nodded and put a finger to his lips, pointing at the ceiling (and his parents’ bedroom beyond) with the fork. Bucky nodded and set down the flowers on the kitchen table, then surveyed the room. “Good job with breakfast,” he murmured, “didja put the coffee on?”

Michael James gasped and reached for his Top Secret Surprise plan: pancakes, eggs, sausage, juice, bacon. He’d forgotten coffee, and that would have ruined the whole thing. Papa and Mum always had coffee in the mornings, he brought it upstairs for them to drink before they came down for breakfast. Mum often complained that Papa forgot his mug on the nightstand and would send Michael James to collect an armful of them from their room when Mum had Mrs. Jarvis over for tea. 

Bucky saw the look on his face and tugged him into a hug. “Not to worry, Mikey, I can handle the coffee. Do you need help with anything else?”

Michael James took a deep breath, like Mum had told him to do whenever he started to worry about a mistake, and shook his head while he exhaled through his nose. Bucky patted his head and picked Sarah up out of her playpen. “Hey there, little lady, let’s make some coffee for your Ma and Pa. But none for you just yet.” Sarah waved her free hand excitedly and smacked Bucky in the face, but he just moved her a little so she was balanced against his hip and couldn’t reach his face. He started humming a tune while he set up Mum’s fancy coffee press, which only got used on weekends when there was time. 

“James?” Mum stood in the doorway in her robe, hair still in her kerchief. Michael James had just put the last of the bacon onto the plate and was pointing out the dishes warming in the oven for Bucky to grab. 

“Hey Peg,” Bucky said with a bright smile, “Surprise!”

Papa appeared over her shoulder, wearing his robe and an undershirt underneath. He took a look around the kitchen and put his hand on Mum’s shoulder. She was biting her lip, her brows drawn together in a look that made Michael James worry. Had he done something wrong?

“Buck, did you do all this?” Papa asked, a little smile on his face. Michael James moved to stand a little behind Bucky, watching his Mum very carefully. 

“Nah, I just brought some flowers for your anniversary. Mikey here made breakfast for ya.” Bucky gently guided Michael James around to stand in front of him. Michael James just looked at the floor. He’d missed a patch of pancake mix just by the table. 

“Michael James?” Mum asked. He swallowed hard and nodded, looking at the messy floor. Mum stood right in front of him. She put her hand on his chin and tipped it up so he was looking straight at her. “This is a wonderful present, young man,” she said, tears in her eyes. “You are such a sweet boy.” She kissed him hard on both cheeks and wrapped her arms around him. All the tension drained right out of him and Michael James thought his smile might crack his face in half. 

Papa came over to ruffle his hair before he swung him up in a big bear hug and smacked a noisy kiss against his cheek. “Is this what you’ve been taking all those notes for?” Michael James nodded, so pleased to have snuck something past Papa and Mum. “Mikey, you are one great kid, you know that? Pegs, how’d we wind up with such a great kid?”

“Well, darling,” Mum said in that warm voice she used when she was happy, “I think we just got lucky.”


End file.
